Peter Foster is the Telegraph's US Editor based in Washington DC. He moved to America in January 2012 after three years based in Beijing, where he covered the rise of China. Before that, he was based in New Delhi as South Asia correspondent. He has reported for The Telegraph for more than a decade, covering two Olympic Games, 9/11 in New York, the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami, the post-conflict phases in Afghanistan and Iraq and the 2011 Fukushima disaster in Japan.

Political score settling holds India back

As India's communists turn up the heat on Manmohan Singh's government over the Indo-US nuclear deal, here's another little slice of Indian political news you probably won't have heard of unless you live here.

Mayawati couldÂ be very powerful after the next election

Mayawati, the Queen of the Dalits who is now chief minister of Uttar Pradesh state (pop.175m), has announced the sacking of more than 10,000 policemen in an already lawless state and is promising to sack 11,000 more in the near future.

Why? Because they were all appointed under the leadership of her predecessor Mulayam Singh Yadav, a mortal political enemy who Mayawati loathes with a vengeance.

Ostensibly the reasons for this cull are 'ethical'. The policeman were appointed in a corrupt process where senior officers make tens of millions of rupees selling jobs to the highest bidder. There have been several arrests as part of the purge.

Of course given the nominal salaries of policemen in India, it doesn't take much to work out how a lowly constable can justify paying several hundred thousand rupees for a job which pays five thousand rupees a month.

Not that this is anything new. Government jobs have long been up for sale. During Mayawati's last tenure as Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh there were reports of senior administrative jobs changing hands for as much as Â£20,000.

And booting out the policemen is only the beginning of Mayawati's score settling.

She's sanctioned Â£40m to restore and expand a hagiographic park in the memory of Dalit hero Dr B.R Ambedkar that Mulayam had deliberately left to wrack and ruin.

She's opened special counters for people to register crimes rejected under Mulayam Singh Yadav's rule; booted out his senior officials and replaced them with loyalists of her own and scrapped the Special Economic Zones which the previous administration had proposed.

My point is not that Mayawati is worse than Mulayam – widely acknowledged to have run India's most populous state as little more than a criminal fiefdom – but is she much better?

How does India progress when each new incumbent spends their political capital on pet projects and score settling. When Mayawati loses office history will no doubt repeat itself and UP's citizenry will remain as poor and down-trodden as ever.

Which brings me back to my point yesterday about Indian politics looking forward.

Plenty of analysts believe that if Mayawati is able to replicate – or even build upon – her success in the Uttar Pradesh state elections this year she will very likely find herself as 'kingmaker' in the negotiations which will follow the next general election.

That election appears to be nearing day by day as Manmohan Singh's minority government gets squeezed by the US on one side – Ambassador Mulford and Secretary of State Boucher saying 'come on, honour the deal' and the Reds on the other warning – 'do the deal and we'll pull the plug'.

Congress might well harbour hopes that Mayawati's BSP could provide them with the 50+ seats which the Communists currently hold, allowing Mrs Gandhi to do away with the old dinosaurs of the left once and for all.

But while political marriage of convenience between Mrs Gandhi and Mayawati might work for Congress, where I wonder will it leave India?